Technical Informations

Here you will find some important notes which will improve the performance of the application as well as file format descriptions.

Memory Management

The application keeps image and animation data plain in your computer memory (RAM). Disk streaming or online compression is not supported. So if you create an animation always be sure that you have enough free memory.

The dialog for creating a new image/animation shows how much virtual memory you have available and how much is needed.

As a rule of thumb you should only use three quarters of your physical memory. If you use more than three quarters, Windows always swaps the memory to your hard disk. This will slow down the animation playback speed dramatically.

Windows sometimes swaps memory to disk even if you have enough physical memory installed and the animation plays jerky. But after the animation cycled two or three times it should be completely loaded into the physical memory.

Supported File Formats

The application supports different file formats for loading and saving images and animations:

Description	Type	Suffix	Load	Save	Color Depths for loading
Amiga animated IFF	Animation	.iff	y	n	all up to 256 colors
Amiga IFF	Image	.iff	y	y	all up to 256 colors
Autodesk FLIC	Animation	.flc	y	y	256 colors
Autodesk FLIC	Animation	.fli	y	n	256 colors
Bitmap Font Format	Image/Font	.bmf	y	y	63 colors
Compuserve GIF	Image/Animation	.gif	y	y	all up to 256 colors
Deluxe Paint Image	Image	.lbm	y	y	all up to 256 colors
Dr.Halo	Image	.cut	y	y	all up to 256 colors
JPEG Image	Image	.jpg	y	y	16.8 million colors
Paintbrush Image	Image	.pcx	y	y	256 colors
Portable Network Graphics	Image	.png	y	y	all up to 16.8 million colors
Pro Motion Sprite	Animation	.spr	y	y	256 colors
Truevision Image	Image	.tga	y	y	all up to 16.8 million colors
Windows animated Cursor	Animation	.ani	y	y	all up to 256 colors
Windows AVI	Animation	.avi	y	y	all up to 16.8 million colors
Windows Bitmap	Image	.bmp	y	y	all up to 16.8 million colors
Windows Bitmap (AnimStrip)	Animation	.bmp	y	y	256 colors
Windows Icon	Image	.ico	y	y	all up to 256 colors
Gameboy Cel	Image	.cel	y	y	256 colors

Pro Motion always saves images and animations with 256 colors, except otherwise specified. In the Preferences (menu File) section Miscellaneous you will find an option called "Save BMP, PNG, ICO, GIF with minimal Color Depth...".
If this option is enabled then those files are saved with only the colors necessary. That means if you use only the first 16 palette entries for your image then the image is saved as a 16 color image instead of a 256 color image.

When loading an image or animation that contains more that 256 colors (i.e. 24bit-BMP, JPG or AVI files) a dialog appears to set the color reduction mode.

Pro Motion supports different file formats for loading and saving non-graphical data such as palettes or stencils:

Description	Type	Suffix	Load	Save
Microsoft Palette	Color Palette	.pal	y	y
Pro Motion Palette	Color Palette	.pal	y	y
Gameboy RGB555 Palette	Color Palette	.pal	y	y
Pro Motion Stencil	Stencil	.stn	y	y

File Format Descriptions

Pro Motion introduces some own file formats as well as extensions of well known file formats.

The Sprite file
Pro Motion has an own file format for saving animations, the Sprite format. This file type saves an animation by writing the image data plain uncompressed into a file. So these files can be easily read and converted to other formats.

The Header defines the dimensions of the animation.

Position(bytes)	Type	Description
$00	3 ASCII-chars	"SPR" as sign for this format
$03	Word	Number of frames
$05	Word	WIDTH in pixels
$07	Word	HEIGHT in pixels

The Header is followed by the color and animation data at position $09+.

For each frame repeating:

Position(bytes)	Type	Description
$00	Word	delay value for this frame in ms
$02	256*3 Bytes	describes the 256 color table with the values Red, Green, Blue
$302	WIDTH*HEIGHT	Bytesimage data of this frame

Values are stored in the WORD format usingthe low byte order (little endian). That means that the least significant byte is saved first folloed by the most significant byte.

If the image data of the last frame is followed by the charactes "TRANSP" then a chunk containing transparency information follows:

Position(bytes)	Type	Description
$00	Byte	transparent pixel

BMP/PNG AnimStrip
An AnimStrip is stored as standard Windows Bitmap file (BMP) or Portable Network Graphics (PNG). The information that is needed to define the AnimStrip layout is saved into a second file using the same directory and file name but with a different extension (.asd).

This file has the following simple structure:

Position(bytes)	Type	Description
$00	4 ASCII-chars	"ASDE" as sign for this format
$04	Word	Number of horizontal frames
$08	Word	Number of vertical frames

Color palettes (*.pal)

These color tables are exactly 768 Bytes large and contain for each of the 256 colors 3 byte values for Red, Green and Blue.

Gameboy RGB555 color palettes (*.pal)

These color tables are exactly 512 Bytes large. Every RGB color value is stored in two bytes (word) using 5 Bits for each channel:
Bits 0-4 is red, 5-9 is green, 10-14 is blue. Bit 15 is unused.

Text Tile Map (*.txm)

When exporting tile map data this file type can be used. It just stores all tile indexes containes in the map as number values, separated by comma into a text file, line by line:
1,1,1,1,1,1,1,2,3,4,5,6
2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2,2
With this file format you may not use tile mirroring, because the mirror flags are not stored into this type of file.

Gameboy CEL file (*.cel)

This is a simple file format that just stores image data as 8x8 pixel blocks. Each 8x8 pixel block is saved bytewise, all 8 pixels of the first line then the next 8 pixels of the next line. Then the next 8x8 block is stored. There are no informations about image width or height since this file format is normally used only to export tile libraries where this information is not needed. The color palette data is stored using a separate file of type Gameboy RGB555.

Gameboy Advance tile map (*.map)

This file format can be used to export tile maps in a format that can be used easily with Gameboy hardware:

Position(bytes)	Type	Description
$00	DoubleWord	Number of tiles in a row (width)
$04	DoubleWord	Number of tile rows (height)
$08	Word	width * height Word values where each value is divided into Bit sections 0..9 tile index 10 flag if the tile must be displayer mirrored horizontally 11 flag if the tile must be displayer mirrored vertically 12..15 unused

Simple tile map (*.stm)

This file format can be used to export tile maps into a custom structured format:

Position(bytes)

Type

Description

$00

4 ASCII-chars

"STMP" as sign for this format

$04

Word

Number of horizontal tiles = WIDTH

$06

Word

Number of vertical tiles = HEIGHT

$08

From this position there are WIDTH * HEIGHT entries made up of the following TileReference structure:

Tile Reference Structure
Position(bytes)	Type	Description
$00	Word	Tile index
$02	Byte	Flag if the tile is to be displayed mirrored horizontally. 0=no mirror
$03	Byte	Flag if the tile is to be displayed mirrored vertically. 0=no mirror

Tile codes (*.tlc)

This file format can be used to export extra tile code data. Every tile can receive a code to define special options like collision flags or "tile can be picked up". For every tile in the tile palette it contains a word value.

Expansion of the Autodesk FLC-Format

So far you can save only animations using Autodesk FLC-format that only have one delay value for all frames. I expanded the format a bit so that each single frame can have its own delay value. The following change has been made:

Now the bytes 8 and 9 of each FRAMEHEADER (yet unused and 0) are a 16-Bit delay value for this specific frame.

A complete description of the FLC-format is available at http://www.compuphase.com or http://www.wotsit.org